“There you are!”
The voice was Oliver’s, and Julia jumped like she had been shot. Ratafia splashed all down the front of her dress, and she let out a dismayed exclamation. The dark red silk was absorbing the stain without too much damage, but still she set the cup down on a nearby table and dabbed at the wet spot with her napkin before looking up at Oliver, who was standing over her with a glower. He was very late; she had almost begun to believe he was not coming.
“I want to talk to you, Julia. In private.” He looked very stern, his eyes hard, his mouth implacably set. His arms were folded across his chest, for all the world as if he were a schoolmaster and she a small boy to be chastized.
“I want to talk to you, too, Oliver, but please keep your voice down. There is no need to make the entire room aware of our personal affairs.”
“Affaire is the word for it, isn’t it?” he said bitterly. “For your relationship with Moorland, I mean. Or are you going to deny it?
I heard from three separate sources that he was seen kissing you on the Jerseys’ terrace. After that disgraceful display in the ballroom!”
Julia sighed. This was going to be worse than she had expected. The civilized gentleman that Oliver had always appeared to her to be had vanished with his anger. Ordinarily she would have grown angry with him in turn, but this time she felt she deserved every insult he could fling at her head. She had played him false, in a way, by leading him to believe that she could marry him when her heart had long been irretrievably lost to Sebastian.
“If you are going to rake me down, Oliver—and I concede you some right to do so!—at least have the decency to do it in private. Come with me to the study, if you please.”
Oliver clamped his lips together and bowed, obviously too angry to trust himself to speak.
Aware of the nudges and avid stares that were turning in their direction, Julia smiled at him for the sake of appearances. When he did not offer his arm she walked beside him, silently directing him to Sebastian’s private sanctum, which was the only room on the lower two levels left undisturbed by the party. When Julia indicated the entrance, Oliver stood back to let her precede him inside, then closed the door after him.
His eyes were hard as agates as he leaned back against the closed door and surveyed her as though she were a particularly distasteful bit of trash he had found in his path. Julia did not enjoy being looked at in such a fashion, and her chin came up. But after all, she reminded herself, he did have a right to be angry, so she resigned herself to enduring a blistering condemnation of her character and morals for a quarter of an hour before she sent him on his way.
“You owe me an explanation, I believe,” he said furiously after a long moment. “Am I right in believing that you are having an affaire with Moorland? Did he force you to it at last? If he did, I’ll—”
“Sebastian has asked me to marry him,” Julia interposed quietly, her hands clasped in front of her as she broke the news to Oliver in the least painful way she knew. “And I have said that I will do so.”
Oliver stared at her, a deep red slowly rising over his throat to mottle his face. “You certainly have a knack for collecting proposals, don’t you? This time last evening, you were engaged to be married to me. Or at least so I thought. What made you choose Moorland, I wonder? I’m by far the better catch, you know. I’m a wealthier man than he, and Moorland isn’t even received. And I’ve certainly never been suspected of murdering my wife. Or is that it? Do you like violence in a man? Have I been too gentle with you? I assure you, I’m not so gentle in bed!”
“I’m so sorry, Oliver, I …” Julia began, ignoring this furious speech in favor of placating him, only to be interrupted by a snarl.
“Sorry! You’re sorry. By God, I’ll make you sorry! No one makes a fool of me!”
He was across the room before Julia was even aware that he had moved, catching her in a cruel grip and dragging her into an embrace. His mouth came down to catch her lips, and his hands were roving over her in an intimate way that made her want to squirm with distaste. But he was strong, and he held her in such a way that she couldn’t move. His tongue entered her mouth, and she considered for an instant clamping her teeth down on it, but this was Oliver after all, and she had wronged him already. But then he picked her clear up off her feet and carried her to the tufted settee that sat on the opposite end of the room from Sebastian’s desk. Depositing her on it, he threw himself down beside her, imprisoning her with the weight of his upper body while he knelt on the floor at her side.
“Stop it, Oliver!” she said severely, as if she were addressing a naughty schoolboy. His gray eyes blazed, and then hands that were clutching her upper arms tightened so much that they hurt.
“I’ll wager you don’t say that to Moorland,” he growled with loathing. “I’ll wager you let him do whatever he likes to you. I saw you looking at him on the dance floor last night, you slut! You wanted him…. I wouldn’t marry you now if you begged me, but I’m going to take you. Just like he has. And he doesn’t even have the excuse of being your fiancÉ. At least, he hadn’t. And once I’ve had you, he won’t.”
“Oliver, stop it! Let me up!” Julia was getting alarmed. Oliver looked crazed with temper, his gray eyes flashing with it, his well formed mouth tight. It frightened Julia to realize that she was completely at his mercy. He was very strong, and it would be impossible for her to get away from him by brute force. She could scream—Julia shuddered as she pictured the scandal that would cause. And the worst part of it was that Sebastian would inevitably find out.
“Kiss me, you slut!”
Julia had been evading his demanding mouth, seeking desperately for some kind of solution that would not involve herself in a major scandal, but none came to mind. His hands clamped down on either side of her head, and he crushed his mouth onto hers. In the process he freed her hands, and she was just about to rake them across his face when a better idea occurred to her. If she pretended to go along with him, for just long enough to put him off his guard, she might then have a chance to escape with no one but the two of them the wiser about what had occurred in this room. Sebastian wouldn’t have to know a thing.
“Oh, Oliver,” she murmured into his mouth, and opened hers just a little, allowing him to kiss her as her arms came up around his neck and her fingers twined in his thick, coarse hair. Angry as he was, he was hurting her mouth, but still kissing him wasn’t completely distasteful. It simply failed to arouse any of the wild longings that surged through her at Sebastian’s slightest touch.
His hand was on her breast, sliding down beneath the neckline of her gown, hard and rough as it closed around her softness. Julia jumped, and tried to pull away. She hadn’t bargained on letting things go as far as this. Her hands were curling into fists as she prepared to let him have a roundhouse punch to the nose, when the study door swung back on its hinges with a loud crash. Julia started, and Oliver did too, both of them looking around with surprise. As she saw who was standing there, Julia’s eyes went wide with horror.
It was Sebastian. Behind him stood his mother, a satisfied smile playing about her lips. Julia had no doubt at all about how Sebastian had known where to find her.
He was furiously angry, Julia knew that at first glance. She shoved desperately at Oliver’s shoulders in a futile attempt to move him so that she could sit up. But the dolt didn’t seem to realize the danger he was in because he continued to kneel on the floor beside the settee, his head dangerously close to hers, and his hand still on her breast! Julia gasped as she realized that, and hastily grabbed at the offending hand and dragged it from her before she realized that to do so must only call Sebastian’s attention to how Oliver had been touching her.
She looked back at Sebastian with horror, praying that somehow he had not seen. But in a glance she saw that her prayers were in vain. He was staring at her like a man who has seen hell, while murder exploded in blue flames from his eyes.
“Get off your bloody knees, Carlyle.”
The icy, growling syllables made Julia tremble. There was an edge of roughness to that smooth voice that Julia had never heard before. Sebastian was ripe for murder, and Oliver was only the first victim he had in mind.
“Sebastian darling, it’s not what you think—”
“Shut up.” The look he sent her was soul shriveling. Then he turned back to Oliver. “And you, you bastard, get up. Unless you want me to beat the hell out of you before you even get on your feet.”
“You’ve got no right bursting in here like this and threatening me!” Oliver was blustering, Julia realized. In the face of Sebastian’s icy menace Oliver’s very real anger had been tempered by fear. Not that she blamed him. He must have seen, as she had, that Sebastian in his present state of mind was more than capable of some ferocious act of violence. To her horror, she heard Oliver say, “Julia is my affianced wife. We are to be wed tomorrow, and as such our behavior has nothing to do with you!”
“Oliver!” Julia gasped in horror, glaring at him before turning her attention back to Sebastian, who was looking at her with the fires of hell burning behind the icy surface of his eyes. “Sebastian, it’s not true!”
Oliver was still on one knee beside her, and she practically shoved him over so that she could go to Sebastian. Sebastian who was standing there looking beautiful and terrible in his blue coat with the white waistcoat and linen and black pantaloons, his silver-gilt hair elegantly brushed and fury leaping out of those blue, blue eyes …
“Isn’t it? I have the special license in my pocket to prove it. Julia and I are to be wed tomorrow. And I also have a note that she personally brought to my house this afternoon, asking me to call on her here today. To discuss the arrangements for our wedding, I have no doubt.”
“No!” Julia moaned, scrambling off the couch and running to Sebastian’s side. She clutched at his arm, which he promptly jerked away with a fierceness that sent her reeling back. She stumbled against his desk and would have fallen except for its support. Clinging to the rolled edge with both hands, she stared at Sebastian with anguished dismay. He was not even looking at her. He was glaring at Oliver, who returned his look with one of loathing. The two men bristled at each other like furious fighting cocks.
“Show me the license, and the note.” Sebastian’s words were forced from behind clenched teeth.
Oliver, with a glint of satisfaction, got to his feet and reached into the pocket of his coat, pulling forth a folded sheet of white paper and another crumpled piece that Julia recognized with horror was indeed the note she had written him earlier in the day. Oliver took two steps forward and held the incriminating papers out to Sebastian, who accepted them stiffly and read the words printed thereon.
“It was Julia’s idea to wed by special license, you know. She told me she wanted to get the whole business concluded while you were out of town. She said you would try to stop her because you wanted her for yourself, but I thought she was exaggerating the danger as females are prone to do. I apologize, Julia, for my lack of understanding, and for the harsh things I said to you in this room earlier. I understand now what you were up to in Lady Jersey’s ballroom last night. You were merely trying to throw Moorland off the scent until you could be safely wed to me. You should have trusted me to protect you, my dear. He has no hold on you, whatever he says. With that license we can be wed tomorrow just as we had planned, and there is not a thing in this world he can do to stop us.” Oliver’s voice as he directed it to Julia was cooler now, and laced with spurious sympathy and concern as he saw a way to revenge himself on both Sebastian and Julia.
Julia, listening to this exchange with mounting horror, could do nothing to save herself. She felt as if she were frozen in place by the waves of icy fury emanating from Sebastian’s stiff body.
“Is any of this true, Julia?” The carefully measured, remote syllables sent icy chills skating along her spine. Julia could only stare at him with horrified, pleading eyes as she shook her head.
“No,” she whispered, her eyes locked to Sebastian’s in a gaze that shut out everyone else.
Oliver gave an angry laugh. “Come now, Julia, are you still afraid of the man? Can you deny that we were planning to wed tomorrow? Without Moorland’s knowledge? Or that you told me he was trying to force you into an affaire and that marrying me out of hand was the only way to prevent him?”
Julia looked into Sebastian’s eyes, and found she could not lie to him. “Oh, Sebastian, what he says is true, but …” she whispered miserably, determined to make a clean breast of the whole story. Oliver interrupted with a satisfied smirk.
“You see, Moorland? Whatever she may have told you, it was done merely to put you off the scent. Her intention has been to wed me all along.”
“Sebastian, no! I—” He silenced her with a single look. She watched wide-eyed as he slowly, deliberately ripped the special license and the note to shreds, which he then let fall to the floor. Could he possibly, by some miracle, overcome the distrust bred in him by years of being unloved long enough to trust her in this instance?
“You will never wed her, Carlyle, and not just because I will not allow it.” Sebastian’s voice was calm—too calm. Julia felt a terrible disquiet as he turned his eyes from Oliver to fix hers. “You will never wed my dear cousin by marriage Julia Stratham because she doesn’t exist. Her real name is a very common one—Jewel Combs, wasn’t it, Julia?—and she has lived most of her life in London’s gutters. She became my kinswoman by the act of participating in a robbery that eventually took the life of my cousin. Ah, yes, you didn’t think I knew that, did you, my own? But I am not quite the fool you continually take me for. I had the runners on your trail before you had been in my house an hour, and they had the whole story for me soon after we arrived at
White Friars. But to continue, Carlyle, Jewel Combs then coerced my cousin into marrying her on his deathbed, and finally had the gall to present herself to me as his grieving widow. I took her in—look at her, and you will see why—and agreed to educate her as a lady. She has been my mistress for some months. Now, Carlyle, do you still wish to make her your wife?”
Sebastian’s eyes had never left Julia’s as he spoke. She in turn stared back at him, mesmerized by the magnitude of the humiliation he was visiting on her. She was scarcely aware of Oliver’s horrified gaze on her or of the concerted gasps and fascinated stares of the crowd that had by now gathered around the dowager countess just outside the study door.
“Julia?” Oliver’s face was a study in conflicting emotions. Julia had no inclination to sort them out as she continued to look steadily at Sebastian. To be stripped bare like this before them all … she couldn’t bear it. She wanted to wilt, to melt away into a little puddle on the floor, but she refused to give Sebastian the satisfaction of seeing just how devastating was the blow he had dealt her. Instead she lifted her chin and straightened her spine, standing away from the support of the desk to face Sebastian squarely on her own two feet.
“Most of what he just said is true.” Her words were icily clear, and ostensibly directed to Oliver. But her eyes never left Sebastian’s. “He has a few minor details wrong, but I won’t bother to correct them now. I am sorry that I deceived you—all.” This last word was tacked on in reference to the gaping onlookers in the doorway. Sebastian, his set face as white as his linen while his eyes burned out of it like fiery jewels, stared at her as she walked steadily toward him.
“Excuse me,” she said with perfect calm, and he moved out of her way like a man in a trance. She was walking by him, and the crowd was already parting to let her through. He turned to her, his eyes glittering with some emotion she couldn’t name.
“Julia …” His voice as he said her name was a hoarse croak.
Julia paused for a moment, her head turning on the white stem of her neck as she looked at him with contempt in her eyes.
“You are a fool, Sebastian,” she said clearly, and then she was walking away, bearding the avid stares of the onlookers with the
regal calm of a queen of the blood on her way to the block. Most of the faces with their shocked eyes and gaping mouths were a blur. Only the dowager countess’ face with its eyes that were so like Sebastian’s penetrated the fog that surrounded her. There was hatred in those blue eyes and triumph.
Julia lifted her chin a little higher in response, and then the onlookers were turning to watch her as she walked steadily along the hall and down the stairs. A surprised footman leaped to open the door for her when he saw that her intention was to leave, and then Julia was walking into the cool dampness of a late spring night.
Despite the delicate silk dress that left much of her arms and bosom bare, she never even felt the faint chill that brought goosebumps to her skin. Her mind was mercifully blank as she walked and walked, walked without thinking for what seemed like hours. She moved along the crowded thoroughfare that was Piccadilly, down through Haymarket and Whitehall, oblivious to the thinning crowds or their changing character, as well as the catcalls and lascivious looks to which a young woman alone on the streets at night was prey when she had neither cloak nor shawl to conceal her dÉcolletage and the obvious quality of her dress.
Finally, without even knowing how she had arrived there, she was back in the slums of Whitechapel amongst the winos and trollops that had been her everyday companions before. But she was not even aware of them. She was in a state of shock through which nothing penetrated. Not until she felt a hand close on her arm, its fingers squeezing her soft flesh with enough force to hurt her. The pain penetrated her daze, and she looked around to see a broad pockmarked face smiling evilly at her from beneath a shock of greasy black hair.
“’Ello, Jool, me dear. You ain’t gone and forgot ol’ Mick, now ’ave you? ’Cause I sure ain’t forgot you,” he said. And then Julia came out of her trance, but it was too late.
Loving Julia Page 31
